Imagining the Kingdom by fostering the Lifeworld (Lebenswelt)

Learning target:Understand a framework within

which to place/critique our practices

Smith’s Big Idea

Overemphasis on rationality

• We have overemphasized an intellectual bent toward faith development (worldview) in the hope of achieving faith formation.

• Shaping/forming spiritualty– Shaping desire/imagination by practices and less

by worldview instruction

What about school leadership

• Does our culture’s (high modernity) overemphasis on rationality, instrumental reasoning, impact our work at all?

Overemphasis on rationality

• Post enlightenment– Increase value on empirical knowledge, facts,

statistical information, deductive reasoning, THE MIND

– Decrease emphasis on emotive understanding, aesthetics, the political and moral, religion

– A shift of rationality to the center and irrationalityto the margins of public discourse

How?

• Shaped by the culture to value the intellect/the rational. NOT shaped BY intellect but TO intellect

• Via communicative practices – subtle shifts in public discourse– What is true?

Enter Jürgen Habermas

- Frankfurt School ( Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Fromm, etc.- Redeem rationality but turn it on itself- Not ready to give up on the Enlightenment project

Lifeworld and SystemLifeworld (Lebenswelt): realm of aesthetic/expressive, moral/political, relationships, qualitative knowledge,

narrative, communicative rationalitySystem: realm of scientific/technical, empirical

knowledge, quantitative knowledge, facts, instrumental rationality

Colonization of the lifeworld• In a neoliberal, capitalist society, system colonizes the realm of the

lifeworld• Post-enlightenment: system has colonized the lifeworld• Weber – “the iron cage of bureaucracy” • the rise to dominance of rationality and empirical understanding

and the concurrent marginalization of the realm of the moral/political, aesthetics and qualitative understanding

• the determinism of corporate interest and bureaucratic administration gradually but inexorably encroaches on the taken-for-granted, everyday assumptions and cultural practices (the micro-practices) that we live by

• Scientistic language and ‘tools’ of measurement are used to reinforce the language of ‘objectivity’– …ways of knowing…

Colonization or…

• …when the liturgy of the system becomes the dominant lens through which we see flourishing (personally, communally, etc.)

• Leads to: quantification and commodification of the lifeworld

• Exceptionally present in a free market capitalist society

Samples of colonization

• Board work• Student Assessment (Fraser Institute)• Quantitative data (“if its worth doing its worth

measuring”)• Language (human resources, benchmarks,

clients, branding/marketing, efficiency, CEO, )• Education for upward mobility? Productive

citizenship? Civic engagement? Responsive discipleship? Skilled workforce? Just society?

• OTHER?

System vs. lifeworld?(No false dichotomies)

• System and lifeworld are not opposed but in need of right ordering (same with Smith)

• System serving lifeworld = flourishing of human condition– In Christian Schools

• Management vs. leadership• Budgets, policies vs. vision/mission• Wrong ordering = loss of vision• Ignoring/dismissing – disables vision

DANGER…

• “The Lifeworld, which holds within it human expressions of values, norms and traditions, may also become repressive if those norms and traditions limit expression and moral development” (1984)

Examples….

• …the lifeworld takes on system characteristics– The church (Weber’s power vs. authority)– The school (control/compliance vs.

empowerment/inspiration) (CTA convention)– Language and communication “Language is

power. It literally makes reality appear and disappear. Those who control language control thought, and thereby themselves and others” Greenfield, 1984

• Microagressions, the darkside of charisma/rhetoric

Most egregious example - Faith

• The colonization of the language and ‘giveness’ of faith by the instrumental rationality of the system

• WHAT IS FAITH?

• Four understandings of faith

Four ‘types’ of Faith (from the Bible)

• Assensus – I assent to these beliefs/creeds (intellectual)– GET IT RIGHT!!!!!!

• Fiducia - I trust the character of this God– Kierkegaard sea of ‘what is’

• Fidelatus – I am in relationship with this God– Love the things of the lover

• Visio – I see as Christ sees

• Invitation to become “aware of and more intentional about our relationship with God” Borg

• Which on allows you to “spend and be spent”

Our roles

• What can I do to foster the lifeworld in my school? – Communicative practices– Attention to right ordering

• Are there areas in which I need to defend the lifeworld in my school?